One of the biggest and most controversial travel trends of 2025 was the extreme day trip, with influencers showing how to take an international trip in one day. But while some found the trend revelatory, others found it immoral.
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I recently fell down the rabbit hole and found myself on the extreme day trip side of TikTok. If you’ve avoided this trend, you’re lucky. Forget weekend getaways, why not make your trips even shorter? Think heading to Toronto for dinner atop the CN tower and back again, or popping to Vegas to catch a show for one night only.
The draw isn’t hard to see. Rather than going on one long vacation, you can take multiple mini-breaks and see the world. With the average American only getting 11 paid vacation days per year, this is a strategic way to maximize your time off. But is it really worth it?
The 300,000+ people who have joined one Extreme Day Trips Facebook page seem to think so. As a lurker, I’ve seen people bragging about their 24-hour breaks in Tenerife, short stop-offs in Geneva for less than a day, and group mini-breaks to Lapland. All of this, accompanied by photos of sun-soaked beaches and historic monuments, was almost enough to pull me in.
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And yet, I can’t hop on board with this trend. My morals and, frankly, my common sense hold me back. Extreme day trips are environmental vandalism masquerading as “travel hacks,” and, honestly, they’re the worst thing to happen to tourism in decades.
The Environmental Impact
I want to start out by talking about the elephant in the room: the environmental impact of flying, particularly for short stays. If you’re trying to reduce your carbon footprint, which, arguably, we should all be doing in 2025, taking multiple short flights a year is the worst thing you can do.
Transport accounts for roughly a quarter of energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. That’s likely much higher in richer countries where travel, not to mention extreme day trips, are prevalent. Flights collectively produce 13.9% of transport emissions, making them second only to road travel. But chances are, you knew that already.
What you may not realize is that short-haul flights have one of the most significant environmental impacts per kilometer. That’s because takeoff uses much more energy than the flight’s cruise phase. The plane needs massive amounts of fuel simply to get into the air.
Long flights justify that environmental cost by traveling thousands and thousands of kilometres. Think of it like the initial cost of takeoff being subsidized by the energy-efficient cruising. But shorter flights waste that opportunity. Instead, they use the same fuel to get airborne and land before they’ve earned it. That should put the real cost of your weekend break into perspective.
As an avid traveler, you’ve likely heard all of this before. Maybe your great aunt ranted about how your frequent vacays were killing the environment last Christmas. (She had a point!) Perhaps you read a headline about climate change that made your stomach sink, and you didn’t dare to click the link. Few of us can claim to be unaware of the colossal impact we’re having on the environment. We know what’s happening. We’re just not ready to face it yet.
There’s little point in my waxing lyrical about the humanitarian cost here. Of course, I could tell you that the World Health Organization considers climate change a “fundamental threat to human health.” Or that, between 2030 and 2050, it’s expected to cause around 250,000 deaths per year, thanks to implications like heat stress, undernutrition, malaria, and diarrhoea.
I could even stand on my soapbox and talk about the injustice of the climate crisis impacting those who contribute the least to it. Yes, the first to feel its wrath and those least able to defend themselves are people in low-income and disadvantaged countries. Note: These are not the same people joining “extreme day trip” Facebook groups and hopping over to Milan for a day.
Big Cost With Little Benefit
Let’s put the planet aside for a second and look at the personal aspect of extreme day trips. The general idea is that you bag a low-cost flight and head over to your chosen destination for a short trip. Often enough, you return the same day or, for leisurely travelers, the next morning.
But ask yourself, how much of a destination can you really see on these breaks? You can’t grasp the wonder of Gaudí’s architecture with just one day in Barcelona. You won’t feel the heartbeat of the city streets in New Orleans if you’re only there for a few hours. At best, you’ll take a few choice pictures of your chosen destination; enough for Instagram bragging rights.
Overestimating the value of these “blink and you might miss them trips” is a mistake. No sooner will you have stepped off the plane than you’ll be planning your route back to the airport. Even if you do manage to relax (which I sincerely doubt), you’ll be counting down the hours until you leave. Imagine subjecting yourself to perpetual last day of vacation blues for no good reason.
While I haven’t been on one of these trips and have no plans to, I can only imagine the stress of trying to pack everything into one day. In my mind’s eye, I see myself rushing from monument to monument for selfies, only stopping for quick snacks along the way. It’s not dissimilar to that dream you have; you know, the one where you’re late for a flight and yet you’re trying to squeeze fifty tasks in before you leave. I know I’m not alone.
When all is said and done, an extreme day trip will leave you lacking in all the ways that matter. Sure, you’ll return home with pictures and some airport tat you’re passing off as a souvenir. But you also get the bonus of a vastly expanded carbon footprint and the hollow realization that you didn’t actually experience anything of the destination in question.
Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t travel at all, far from it. But hitting 15 destinations for literal flying visits costs more than you might imagine and delivers precisely no cultural value. My argument is simple: choose quantity over quality in your trips. You owe that much to yourself and the planet. And, frankly, that’s the only ethical option we have left.
